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Mysuru has emerged as the country’s cleanest city followed by Chandigarh and Tiruchi in a sanitation survey conducted by the Ministry of Urban Development under the Swachh Bharat Mission.
The results of ‘Swachh Survekshan-2016’ were released by Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu here on Monday.
The Ministry had, in October last year, commissioned a survey of sanitation scenario in 75 major cities, including 53 with a population of above 10 lakh each and State capitals. Since Kolkata and Noida will participate in the next round, the ranking this year is for 73 cities.
New Delhi Municipal Council came in fourth while Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency Varanasi was ranked 65th among 73 cities. Dhanbad was at the bottom of the ladder.
Interestingly, Mysuru had also topped the last cleanliness survey which was conducted in 2014 among 476 cities with a population of one lakh and above each. This was commissioned by the Ministry under the National Sanitation Policy 2008, before the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission.
Based on the comparison of the marks and ranks of the two surveys, Venkaiah Naidu, said, “Cities from South and West continue to do well over all but those in other parts of the country, and particularly in the North, are beginning to catch up with the traditional leaders.”
Of the cities surveyed, 32 have improved ranks since the last survey including 17 from the North, Naidu said, adding that this is a clear evidence of enhanced efforts being made by the northern cities towards sanitation and new cities challenging the domination of cities from the South and the West.
Of the 32, top 10 cities that have substantially improved their ranks in the 2016 survey are Allahabad, Nagpur, Visakhapatnam, Gwalior, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Vijayawada and Lucknow, a statement from the Ministry said.
Out of the total marks of 2,000 for assessing the performance of efforts of 73 cities, 60 per cent were assigned for solid waste management related parameters, 30 per cent for construction of toilets and 5 per cent each for city level sanitation strategy and behaviour change communication.
The Quality Council of India had conducted the survey by deploying 25 teams which visited 42 locations in each city.
Swachh Bharat Mission is aimed at ensuring door-to-door collection, transportation and scientific disposal of municipal solid waste in all the 83,000 wards in urban areas by 2019 besides construction of one crore household individual toilets and over five lakh public and community toilet seats.
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